"Clearly people think they can get away with things on social media that they wouldn't get away with on the street," Mings told The i. "If someone was racist to me in the street, you'd be a lot more shocked. Which is strange, because social media is real.

"I got thousands of messages. Thousands and thousands and thousands on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Private messages. Personal stuff: derogatory terms, offensive language, you're this and you're that, you shouldn't be alive, this is what's going to happen to your family. It's far too easy to target people on social media.

"You'll see the majority of replies to that sort of thing is positive -- people defending me, or criticising the other person.

"But there are some that are just completely pathetic. I show my friends occasionally and they'll read through it and be like, 'How are people allowed to get away with stuff like this?' My family are worse.

"This is also what people don't realise: my mum will read comments, it might not affect me but if it affects my mum -- and it's upsetting -- that's not right. I feel they only do it because social media gives them a voice and a screen to hide behind."

Mings has not experienced any racist abuse in person while at Bournemouth, but admitted to suffering two incidents during his stint at Ipswich.

"Player-to-player I think the numbers (of racial abuse incidents) would be really low, which is positive, credit to the organisations, like Kick It Out, who do great work and have done over the years, to get to the stage now where in 2018 numbers are impressive," said Mings.

"But if you look at fans and social media and those numbers there, there's certainly a lot more that can be done in terms of punishment.

"Someone might go on Twitter and write a racist tweet and get banned from Twitter. OK, they're banned from Twitter, I'm not sure Twitter is their whole life.

"If they are found to be guilty of that then it should come with repercussions from the police. If it happened on the street it would."

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